Abstract:
On 26-Sep-2022 NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission impacted Dimorphos, the satellite of binary near-Earth asteroid 65803 Didymos in order to test the kinetic impactor approach to planetary defense. Among the key mission objectives was a requirement to quantify the effect of the impact on the orbit of Dimorphos about Didymos. A related objective was to discern the effect of ejecta that was produced from the impact and measure the additional momentum transferred to the target as a result. To meet these objectives high-precision trajectory estimates were required, both for the satellite orbit of Dimorphos and the heliocentric orbit of the Didymos system. This presentation will describe the disparate observational data types used and modeling challenges faced in estimating these orbits.
Bio:
Dr. Steven Chesley is Senior Research Scientist with NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. His expertise is in asteroid and comet orbit determination and impact hazard assessment. Steve has extensive spaceflight project experience, including NEAR-Shoemaker navigation, numerous NASA comet-spacecraft encounters, the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission, and the DART asteroid impact experiment.